


Pun Books and Coping Mechanisms

by uhright



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Coping, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9045188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uhright/pseuds/uhright
Summary: (Written for The Last of Us Secret Santa on tumblr!)Prompt: "Joel takes care of Ellie during the Winter chapter."





	

**Author's Note:**

> i rlly hope this isn't too short!!!

Joel can see the change in her. In the next few weeks, not once does Ellie pull out her pun book. She stops joking with him altogether. Stuck in a perpetual state of melancholy that Joel doesn't know how to cure. He sees a bit of himself in her—how this world snuffed the determined fire out of him and left behind an ambivalence.  
  
But every time the world gives some good, it slaps it out of your hand right after.  
  
The first time he hears her crying, it wakes him from his sleep. He doesn't say anything, doesn't snap at her for slacking on watch. He collects his blanket, drapes it across her shoulders, and tells her, "It's okay if you aren't feeling up to anything right now. None of this is your fault."  
  
“I just—I keep seeing his face all hacked up. Because of me. And I don’t know whether to fucking throw up or cry.”  
  
He grabs her shoulders and turns her to face him. “It was either you or him, Ellie.”  
  
From then on, he tries to watch for signs that she's mentally overexerting herself, and tells her to take a break. He lets her bathe longer in the streams while he collects different berries and wood for the upcoming days. He gives her his full attention when she grazes the subject, silently encouraging her to talk about it.  
When she does talk about it, an elephant sits upon his chest. He tries his hardest to keep his emotions in check, tries not to show his anger or his sadness because it could have been so much worse. David could have succeeded in his plans.  
  
After she sighs, signifying the end of her sharing, he envelops her in a hug and lets her know, again, that it wasn’t her fault, that David was gross and disgusting and he’s dead.  
  
After she leaves to do something else, Joel gets sick in a nearby bush from nerves.  
  
He doesn’t want to see the world chisel away at her, molding her into this cynical shell of a human that populates the wastelands.

* * *

She can’t even look at blood anymore.

When she smells it, she gets sick. It gets to the point where she doesn’t even want to fight for herself anymore.  
  
He doesn’t know what to fucking do. Ellie is such a strong girl, and he knows that she can come out of this, but he doesn’t know how to _help her_.  
  
It reminds him of the first time she shot a man to defend him. How she hadn’t slept for a full two days because of the guilt.  
  
This is different, though. This is trauma.  
  
He tries to explain to her that the sight of blood is inevitable, as is the taking of life. It’s like eating or sleeping. Just a routine that she’ll eventually have to get used to.  
Joel starts her off with animals to get her back into the swings of things. And he realizes that wielding a switchblade is no different that riding a bike or driving a car—you never forget how to do it.

* * *

When she stops getting sick from killing deer or rabbits for food, he graduates her up to infected.  
  
She keeps asking him if she’s being annoying, if he’s angry because she still sometimes sees glimpses of David in store mirrors or feels a hand in her hair and it causes her to curl into herself for a few hours or a few days.  
  
He always tells her, “It isn’t your fault, Ellie. Stop apologized for something you have no control over.”  
  
And then they continue with what they were doing.  
  
Sometimes, when her anger spills over like a pot of tea, he’ll take her to a house in the city and let her throw plates and breakable cups against the wall until she eventually sinks to the floor with a sigh of relief.  
  
He lets her keep a journal in her pack, because it starts to help after a week or two, despite his usual protests of “don’t carry any more than the necessities,” but he guesses that keeping her from snapping is a necessity. She writes in it whenever they make it to a new city, and she draws pictures of the various creatures they encounter.  
  
She even lets Joel (more like _forces_ him to) draw things, too, so she has a little reminder of him to look back on.

* * *

The first time she has to kill a human again, he realizes it isn’t about the taking of someone’s life. It’s the vulnerability and the trauma she faced in that moment. The death reminds her of David. How his face had been hacked so severely that Joel couldn’t tell where the man’s goddamn nose was. How the air tasted so strongly like copper from the huge puddle of blood pooling around the man’s head that he gagged. When he had pulled away from Ellie, he ignored the stickiness of blood upon his hands from touching her face.  
  
He explains to her, tries to convince her, that by killing people who hurt her, she’s shining a light on the darkness that David left inside her.  
  
She points out the small scar across the bridge of her nose a lot, and every time he catches the dark red shine in the light, he wants to either kill or throw up.

* * *

The first time she pulls out her pun book, he can’t help but smile. For the whole drive, she tells him jokes that make him cringe, yet he laughs with her anyway.

* * *

He knows at this point that he can’t just let her go and die. He’s gotten too attached to her, as if she’s another daughter of his.  
  
He makes up his mind before they even step foot in that hospital, but he can’t tell Ellie that. His brain tries to tell him that he should’ve left her with Tommy, that maybe if he had he wouldn’t be carrying his burdens along with hers. But he doesn’t mind, he tells himself, because she’s given him a purpose again. She’s breathed new life into his old bones, given him a reason to survive.  
  
He just hopes he can be the same to her.


End file.
